December 21, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Yule Tree by Andrea Nicki

A man asks me to be the angel who tops his family tree, watches over humans comforts unhappy husbands the angel with low expectations: “men will be men” I buy Read More …

December 20, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Our father-king by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

When I was disillusioned about Christianity and its God, I wrote my one last letter to the male god to say good-bye. That happened in 1994, as I was being Read More …

December 18, 2016June 4, 2023 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Joanna Kujawa, Ph.D.

Dr Joanna Kujawa is the author of The Other Goddess: Mary Magdalene and the Goddesses of Eros and Secret Knowledge, scholar, and spiritual detective. She received her BA and MA from Read More …

December 17, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Kathleen McKern Verigin

Kathleen McKern Verigin is a licensed and ordained interfaith minister with deep roots in Celtic Spirituality and the Divine Feminine. She is founder and director of Anam Cara Connections, a Read More …

December 17, 2016November 15, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Special Post) Why I choose to be an RTM contributor by Glenys Livingstone

The contribution of my writing to Return to Mago E-Magazine has evolved since it began four years ago, into a deeply mutually enhancing relationship. The time and effort taken to Read More …

December 16, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Anna Tzanova

View all posts by Anna Tzanova. Anna Tzanova, M.A. E-mail: imim@sbcglobal.net Residence: Northern California Born and raised in Bulgaria; lived for almost a decade in Toronto, Canada and close to Read More …

December 15, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Yia Alias

View all posts by Yia Alias. Yia Alias is a Transpersonal Counsellor, Artist, Writer, Ceremonial Facilitator and Women’s Mystery Mentor specialising in healing through ritual. She has diplomas in Transpersonal Read More …

December 14, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Phibby Venable

View all posts by Phibby Venable. Phibby Venable lives on the line separating the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Mountains. She has authored six books of poetry, a book of short Read More …

December 13, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Jude Lally

View all posts by Jude Lally. Jude Lally is an artist, a writer and holder of sacred space. She grew up a few miles from Loch Lomond, where the river Read More …

December 12, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Deanne Quarrie

View all posts by Deanne Quarrie. Deanne Quarrie. D. Min. is a Priestess of the Goddess, and author of five books. She is the founder of The Apple Branch where she Read More …

December 11, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Kerryn Coombs-Valeontis

Kerryn Coombs-Valeontis is an art and horticultural therapist working in mental health in Australia.. She is just emerging as a poet and is studying poetry therapy. Her poems and art Read More …

December 10, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Rhyannan

Pashta MaryMoon (Rhyannan) is the elder priestess of the Kairosean Kithentradition; and has spent over 20 years being the Pagan visiting clergy/chaplain in hospitals, hospices, and prisons — as well Read More …

November 25, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Mary Saracino

Read all posts by Mary Saracino. Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir writer who lives in Denver, Colorado. Her most recent novel is Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Read More …

(Poem) Birth of Aphrodite #1 by Donna Snyder

she stands emptied her pallor bare to the world speckled and blemished and seemingly open the other half gone to the bottom of the sea its energy subsumed within her opalescent belly the soft flesh the muscular foot the valve opening only to close the world has left its grime on her fleshiness hematomas well up beneath her pellucid skin greens and blues and then magentas swell all the colors of sea foam wreathe her breasts somewhere long away from time’s wrath like Aphrodite absconded from the world she flees the bite of sun and harm of wind she averts her gaze and leaves nothing behind just a single shell to mark her own virgin birth modest she looks quietly at what creation offers and arranges its abundant gifts about her beauty soft flesh a muscular foot a valve opening only to close
Lake Pergusa as the voice of the Sacred Female in the novel, The Singing of Swans by Mary Saracino

In 2001, I had the privilege of traveling to Sicily as part of the Dark Mother Study Tour led by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum. The trip transformed my life. Lucia guided us around the island where we visited sacred sites where the Divine Female had been venerated, ancient ruins, and churches devoted to the Black Madonna. Near Enna, we visited Lake Pergusa, the site where, according to Sicilian legends, Proserpina/Persephone descended into the Underworld of her own volition to begin her self-discovery. Lake Pergusa is a salinated body of water that turns bright red as a part of its natural cleansing process. It is also a key spot for European bird migrations. The Lake has been hailed by poets and historians for more than 2000 years as a marvel of flora and fauna. At that site, we also met with eco-feminists who are working to revitalize Lake Pergusa, which has been decimated by run-off from the Formula One race cars that, since 1957, had roared around its three-mile perimeter, spewing toxic fumes and other unsustainable runoff into its sacred waters. In October 1999, after a 20-year struggle waged by environmentalists and eco-feminists, the local racetrack authority agreed to remove the track and cooperate in the restoration of the Lake. But because this project is not a political priority in Sicily, it remains stalled. Meanwhile, each year Lake Pergusa continues to shrink and now hovers on the brink of disappearing altogether. When we were at the site in 2001, we were unable to get close to the water because the Lake was encircled by a chain link fence. I was deeply moved by the sight of the beautiful Lake Pergusa that had been poisoned by humans….as I was moved by the other sacred sights we visited on the Dark Mother Study tour. My time there inspired me to write my novel, The Singing of Swans, which chronicles the lives of four women…one contemporary American woman, Madeline, who has lost her way, and three other women, from different time periods in herstory, who were venerators of the Divine She. One is a priestess in ancient Sicily named Rosalina, one is a Benandanti in Northern Italy named Ziza who flies through the night skies to enact battles with the Malandanti to protect the harvest and the livelihood of her village, and one is a healer in Southern Italy, named Ibla, whose tongue has been cut out for speaking truth to power, who transforms her disempowerment into paintings of Black Madonnas. Two chapters in that novel are told from the point of view of Lake Pergusa. Chapter 12: The Lake Speaks and Chapter 20: The Lake’s Plea In Chapter 12, the lake tells her story….of how she came to be, her connection to the Divine She, and how humans have tried to destroy her. From ancient times, the women have come to my shores to worship and give praise and thanksgiving to the Divine She. My waters, long revered as sacred, were used to bless their rituals and their rites. Like the maidens and mothers of their tribe, I, too, bleed. My waters turn red periodically throughout the years during the months of summer, sloughing off that which is no longer needed, just as the uteruses of these human females have done since the dawn of their race. Thus, some have called me the lake of blood. To bleed and live, to give life and to sustain it, to be a portal for continuation and transformation, these are but some of the greater chthonic mysteries I whisper, the secrets revered by the multitudes throughout the millennia. For like the women, I am the source of progeny, the keeper of lineage, the collected memory of the body. I see all, know all. In the depths of my watery wisdom lie the secrets of the Earth and Sky and Heavens. I am the passageway, the guide, the translator, the mother tongue of all that is wild, untamed, unspoken (p. 175). At the end of The Singing of Swans, Madeline, the contemporary American woman who has lost her way, travels to Sicily to reconnect with her ancestral roots, and learns the identities of the women who have been visiting her in her dreams (Rosalina, Ziza, and Ibla). In Sicily, she finds her way to Lake Pergusa. There, using the fictional technique of magical realism, she undergoes an initiation in which she, like Proserpina/Persephone, descends beneath the Lake’s waters to be reborn again, to reunite her heart and her head, and reclaim her purpose in life. Water is sacred. Like amniotic fluid, it swaddles us in life-giving nourishment. In my novel, the symbolism of Lake Pergusa, giving her a voice, representing her as a cauldron into which Madeline descends to be transformed, represents our connection to the Earth, the original Divine Being, and our connection to the Divine Dark Mother, the original Divine Mystery of humankind. It felt necessary and important to include Lake Pergusa as a character in the novel. Ancient humans understood our connection to the natural world. They understood that water is life and life is water. They understood that we are all connected, and that we must work together—or fail. Here in Albuquerque, in the high desert lands, water is evermore sacred due to its scarcity. To not honor it is to risk peril. In my novel, Lake Pergusa is the personified voice of the Divine Female. Today, perhaps more than ever before, we must heed her clarion call….to fight injustice, to protect the Earth, the sky, the water and the land on our beloved Mother planet. In Chapter 20 of the novel, the Lake pleas for understanding. She says: I asked not for this outrage. For millennia I resided in accord, happily abiding with all that lived, without such torture thrust upon me…. In the middle of the twentieth century, I was raped and plundered. This terrible crime must be avenged. Justice must prevail. How long? How long can the humans reign unchecked? …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Julie Stewart Rose

Julie Stewart Rose is a Singer-Songwriter, Artist and businesswoman based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Julie’s artistic expression comes from a desire to explore mythology and spirituality as an expression of the feminine. Her art typically is multi-layered and loaded with symbolism and a beautifully complex, textured colour palette. Julie works primarily in the spiritual realm when she paints. Julie’s passionate interest in feminine energy is expressed as forms of spirituality. To build up the texture of Julie’s work, her mixed media approach includes hidden photos, underlying symbols and outlines, plaster, glues and acrylic paints built up in layers over time. Her website is: http://www.juliestewartlive.com/
(Essay 5) From Heaven to Hell, Virgin Mother to Witch: The Evolution of the Great Goddess of Egypt by Krista Rodin

[Author’s Note: This series based on a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth seeks to demonstrate how many of the ideas behind the Ancient Egyptian goddesses and their images, though changing over time and culture, remain relevant today.] Isis Tricks Ra, the Sun-God Isis is perhaps the most popular of all the Egyptian goddesses because she had temples across the Roman Empire from England to Hungary and throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Cleopatra saw herself as the living incarnation of the goddess. The Roman army and traders who dealt with Egyptian artifacts carried images of the goddess and the Egyptian Holy Family throughout the Empire. Museums in London, Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and Rome as well as Tunis and Egypt have statues of her, which were discovered within their nation’s geographical boundaries along with those that had been taken from the Nile Valley. Her temple in Philae was among the last of the pagan temples to be destroyed by the Christians in the 6th century. Isis, the Mother of the god Horus, with him sitting on her knee, who had miraculously conceived him from a father who was beyond earthly existence, was not to be ignored, but to be respected, and for those who wanted to establish a new religion, feared and/or demonized. Isis, like Hathor, was not meek and mild. She was smart and cunning; traits that the Abrahamic faiths are not fond of portraying as positive feminine characteristics. One of the early stories of Isis describes how she tricked father Sun-god Ra, often spelled Re, into giving her his secret name. There are a number of translations of the legend, but a version that is most revealing comes from Ancient Egyptian Legends by M. A. Murray.11 In it, Isis is depicted as curious and power-hungry. She wants the Sun-god’s power to rule over the earth and humankind. He rules through the power of his secret name. A personal name was sacred and one of the key elements needed for reincarnation in Ancient Egyptian religion. Many sacred traditions believed that knowing the name of a god or person gave them power of it. The Hebrews never called YHWH by his name as that was considered sacrilegious.12 In Genesis 1:26-27 and 2:19-20, God gives Adam the right to name the creatures of the earth, thereby giving him ‘dominion’ over all other creatures. Even today many traditions give new names to those who are initiated into a particular faith, e.g., baptismal names, the Pope takes on a new name when he is consecrated, a guru gives the initiate a new name when s/he is ready to receive it, and traditionally Native American tribes often gave youth new names after they had gone through an initiation process, to cite just a few examples. A secret name contains the essence of the being. A name, as any word, is made from sounds that form vibratory patterns; knowing the secret name means having the power to use those sound wave patterns. In the legend, Isis wants the power of the great god who ruled the night and the day; to get it she must know his name. As nothing he has created can harm him, Isis mixed earth and her saliva into the image of a hooded snake, the symbol of many great goddesses, such as the Egyptian serpent-mothers Iusaset and Wadjet, or the Indian Ananta and the Southeast Asian Nagas. The snake was, therefore, a part of Ra himself rather than something he had created. She took the molded figure, breathed life into it, as she was the Goddess of the Breath of Life, and set it on the path Ra was to take as he crossed from the eastern to western horizon, i.e. from day to night. The snake’s “fangs sank into the flesh of Ra, and the fire of its poison entered the God, for the divine substance was in the serpent.”13 Ra was immediately writhing in severe pain. When he could speak, he called all the gods and goddesses together to find someone who could heal him. They all failed until Isis came. She reminded him that only by having the power of his name could he be healed. At first he gave her all the names by which he was known, including: “I am the Maker of heaven and earth, I am the Establisher of the mountains, I am the Creator of the waters, I am the Maker of the secrets of the two Horizons, I am Light and I am Darkness, I am the Maker of Hours, the Creator of Days, I am the Opener of Festivals, I am the Maker of running streams, I am the Creator of living flame. I am Khepera in the morning, Ra at noontide, and Atum in the evening.”14 Isis was not fooled, however, and insisted that she could not stop his pain until he revealed his secret name so that she could apply the appropriate healing magic. Ra sent the others away and leaned over to Isis: “When the Name came forth from the heart of Ra to pass to the heart of Isis, the goddess spoke to Ra and said, ‘Bind thyself with an oath, O Ra, that thou wilt give thy two eyes unto Horus.’ Now the two Eyes of Ra are the sun and the moon, and men call them the Eyes of Horus to this day.”15 Isis proved herself to be: “the great One, Mistress of the Gods, Mistress of magic, she is the skillful Healer, in her mouth is the Breath of Life, by her words she destroys pain, and by her power she awakes the dead.”16 Through the legend, it is clear that Isis was not a goddess to be taken lightly. She could ‘take away the pain of the world’ as the plea to the Virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic tradition requests. Through her son’s eyes granted by the Sun-god father, she influences the sun and the moon, i.e., time, and therefore, life. She gives the Breath of Life, which was a person’s unique identity and personality, their ba. Her sister, Nephthys, was associated with the person’s ka, or communal soul/universal spirit. Both are needed and both are to be protected after a person dies. The sisters …
(Poem) The language of the Serpent by Susan Hawthorne

There’s a serpent in my head growing wings. How can I learn the grammar of the serpent? The pronouns, the particles, the coiling syntax. The language of the imaginary reading out from the centre of the spiral— The grammar of the serpent language. But the language of the serpent is silent still. I grew up with snakes. They were on the road as we rode home from school. They were in the paddocks. They were chased out of the garden. They hid in the long grass and could not be found. I have found the shed skins of snakes after they have left. I learnt about the Snake Goddess from Crete during secondary school and when I travelled to Crete in 1977 and again in 1985, I spent a lot of time looking at the snakes that were carved into the rocks from archaeological sites. I have pored over the images in Jane Ellen Harrison’s books and in those of Marija Gimbutas. In Australia, it’s not uncommon to find carvings of snakes or snakes painted on to rocks. The snake represents regeneration. She sheds her skin and slithers away unseen. Snakes are protectors of the home and keep away rats. In the tropics we have many snakes, my favourite is the green tree snake. It is non-venomous and will sometimes come indoors. I have moved one of these using a long-handled garden tool and twisting it around like a piece of spaghetti. I walked across the garden, and it slipped off to the other side of the fence. It was perhaps a cousin of the one pictured here twined around the light and muscling from the roof. This poem is from my book Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy (1999). (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/
When Prayer Beads Break by Jude Lally

Over the years I have made hundreds of prayer beads for people, but I’ve only ever made two sets for myself. The first is a green jade set dedicated to Brighid with a small wooden Brighid’s cross from Ireland. The second is a set with dramatic rutilated quartz beads, white and clear quartz with long thin needles of jet black crisscrossing the bead. This set is dedicated to the Cailleach, the old woman of the land I live on. The pendant is the tip of an antler I was gifted while visiting the Shrine of the Cailleach. You can read that story via the link at the bottom of the page. Each morning when my fingers begin their journey around these prayer beads the first set of beads after the pendant is three round, silver beads, which are satisfyingly weighty. These are the step beads and whatever state of mind I find myself in they are a wonderful invitation to take three steps into sacred space. This might be a pause of three breaths, or imagining one or more sacred sites where my feet might have walked on holy ground. More often than not, I recall my visit to Tigh nam Bodach, which translates from Gaelic as the House of the Old Man and is also known as the Cailleach’s Shrine. The Shrine of the Cailleach, Glen Cailleach, Perthshire, Scotland The little glen that houses the shrine comes to mind and the fast-flowing waters of Allt Cailleach (stream of the Cailleach) which rushes down the side of the remote glen. In myths, deer are referred to as the Cailleach’s fairy cattle, and you’ll find many deer in the neighbouring Glen Lyon – due to the landowners who encourage them to stay close by feeding them, their numbers, assuring a good selection when they take the wealthy visitors off to shoot deer for an afternoon of sporting entertainment. After the step beads are another set of three beads, relating to birth, life, and death. The first speaks to being born into this world, then your fingers will feel the different pointed texture of the mystery bead, generally a star-shaped quartz bead, which is there to acknowledge the great mystery of life, and the divine spark that is present in all living things (from rocks to mountains, comic nebulae to worms, trees, and humans). The bead after the mystery bead is the death bead, to acknowledge with birth comes death, something none of us can escape. Set slightly outside this run of beads is the bead that represents our life and free will, for it is our choice of what we engage with in life and what we carry in our hearts. How we engage with the world and whether we engage with the divine spark within and around us. What does it mean when prayer beads break, varying traditions have different insights – from rebirth to an ending, and to some a sign to repair your beads. And this is exactly what happened to my set around the summer solstice. Of all the hundreds of sets I’ve made I only experienced one person who reported her set breaking, this happened as she held the beads in her hands at the bedside of a beloved, the silk thread breaking at the same time her beloved died. My beads broke one day just as I touched them. They weren’t being stretched or taught – the silk cord seemed to just disintegrate. As I was due to take a retreat the next week, I ordered some black silk thread and brought them with me. The Loch of the Big Women I felt drawn to bring the beads with me as we headed up to one of the highest points of the island, Loch Nam Ban Mora, the Loch of the Big Woman, on this isle, Eilean Nam Ban Mora – the Island of the Big Women. Loch Eilean Nam Ban Mora (Loch of the Big Women), heather. Looking over to the Sgurr It was a warm day with a strong breeze and each of the women found their own spot to sit by and around the loch. I was cooried (a Scots word meaning to crouch in, or nestle) in among the heather, the photo above looks south to the great rock feature of the Sgurr (a Gaelic word for jagged peak). Antler and prayer beads Rutilated quartz beads, silver spiral threshold beads, and silver step beads – washed in the loch waters While the beads are hard stone and not woven cloth, there was still a deep symbolism in washing them in the waters of the loch. An island whose name and loch are named after mythical big women. No one can really pinpoint who the ese big women were – but I like to think of big as meaning looked up to, and respected. Throughout the western isles are stories of big women – such as Scathatch on the neighbouring isle of Skye. This washing was a purification ritual, a ritual of renewal, for both the beads and myself. I am reminded of the task set by Baba Yaga in which Vasalisa is required to wash Baba Yaga’s clothes: ‘To wash something is a timeless purification ritual. It not only means to purify, it also means – like baptism from the latin baptiza – to drench, to permeate with a spiritual numen and mystery. In the tale the washing is the first task. It means to make taut again that which has become slackened from the wearing. The clothes are like us, worn and worn until our ideas and values are slackened by the passing of time. the renewal, the reviving, takes place in the water, in the re-discovering of what we really hold to be true, what we really hold sacred’ – Clarrissa Pinkola Estes. Women Who Run With the Wolves. Nosing out the facts: The Retrieval of Intuition as Initiation To sit by the loch was a ritual of …
Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Ann Beavis

Mary Ann Beavis (Ph.D., Cambridge University) is Professor of Religion and Culture at St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Canada). Her areas of specialization include Christian Origins, Feminist Biblical Interpretation, and Women and Religion. The courses she teaches include “Goddesses in Myth and History,” and her current research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, is a study of women who blend Goddess Spirituality and Christianity. Her books include Mark’s Audience, Jesus and Utopia, Mark (Paideia Commentaries), and Hebrews (Wisdom Commentaries), and two edited volumes, The Lost Coin: Parables of Women, Work and Wisdom, and Feminist Theology with a Canadian Accent. She is the author of many peer-reviewed articles, five of which reflect her current interest in the Mary Magdalene/Mary of Bethany tradition.
Re-Storying Goddess/Dea to the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from the Introduction of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Triple Goddess, Hatra, Iraq, second century. Lawrence Durbin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, 114. At the heart of PaGaian Cosmology is the re-storying and expression of Goddess metaphor for the sacred: it was She who called me – into Her, to learn of Her, to find a way to speak of Her. This cosmology is originally a study and embodiment of Goddess in three qualities – often known commonly as “Virgin, Mother and Crone,” but globally She has been named and praised in various terms: such as possessing the three qualities of ‘preserver/protector,’ ‘creative power,’ and ‘destructive power’ (Kali in India); or in other ancient depictions the three qualities are represented perhaps with grain, sword and snake (Hecate in Greece); perhaps with grain, throne and scorpion (Anatha of Egypt); perhaps as poet, physician and smith-artisan as in the case of Celtic Brigid. Sometimes She has been represented as three matrons (Germany and Italy). In East Asia, there are many triplicities and triads: in Korea Mago, the Creatrix, is identified with Samsin (Triad Deity) and also Goma is referred to as one of the “Three Sages.”[i] In South America, the Goddess Chia is known as a triple goddess. In our times She and Her multivalent dimensions have rarely been understood, and frequently Her triplicity has been re-configured as three sages or kings; and in some religions She has been replaced with an all-male trinity. Yet many continued to seek Her. The Form and the Shape that they sought was not in any Atlas. Her gaps had been covered up, Her hollows filled in, Her name blanked out. She lay buried beneath things, silent, but with a detectable visceral pulse.[ii] Re-Storying Goddess for me has meant re-storing a sense of She to the Cosmos, restoring female sacrality – to the small particular self to begin with, and to other, and to all-that-is: re-storingHer as Language, as sacred language – image and word – for the Creative Dynamic that unfolds the Universe. Why not? She has been absent for so long. And what might happen then? What difference might it make to the world we live in? The primary Place that She, Mother-Universe, may be sensed as present, is in one’s own bodymind, the breath, the whole phenomena of its ebbs and flows: and the breath may be the primary place for contemplating Her three aspects of waxing, peaking and waning – out of the void and back into it, over and over. A lot of inhabitants of Western industrialised culture have been turned into outsiders in our own land[iii] – and I mean primarily the ‘land’ of our own bodyminds, but it is also and inseparably true of the Earth land/country in which we dwell. In the patriarchal context, which dominates most present global cultures, this is particularly true for women. We are often (or have been) outsiders in our own land – the Land of our own bodyminds: the female in particular, by and large, at some point in the story, lost native title to her land. Most of us – female and male and all variations, have learned well how to think from outside ourselves: and with a consciousness that treats ourselves personally and thus usually also others, as less than worthy of reverence. Women particularly have been and are a colonized people: that is, female embodiment has become the unknown, unspoken, clouded continent in most present global cultures. An overwhelming majority of females on the planet are engaged in a daily claiming or re-claiming of our native en-titlement to our land, our bodymind: the details vary from culture to culture, and situation, and is more extreme/blatant in some contexts, but the overall effect is common, and ultimately shared. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, in the late nineteenth century, it is not female biology that has betrayed us, but the beliefs and the stories we have about ourselves. Most of the religious stories that most on the globe grew up with at this time, did not have the female in care-ful mind. Most world religions at this point in time still specifically story the female as problematic to creation or enlightenment or whatever, or at least secondary: though some are clever enough to attempt to disguise it. The term ‘God’ still commonly invokes the ‘Face of Ultimate Reality,’ the Absolute, and the term ‘Goddess’ still overwhelmingly invokes a mere mythological entity. ‘Goddess,’ or ‘God,’ is metaphor, a poetic image – suggesting a likeness of femaleness or maleness in the Sacred/Deity. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, a metaphor is a word or phrase used to suggest a likeness. ‘Goddess’ is a figure of speech suggesting a likeness of femaleness in the Deity – few would argue with that: though many do argue that ‘God’ does not suggest a likeness of maleness in the Deity, that it/He is neutral or may represent both, whereas Goddess may not. Some cultures don’t need the word ‘God’ nor do some need the word ‘Goddess’ because female sacrality is not a problem – femaleness in such cultures, is understood to embody transformatory powers[iv] – and replicates the very nature/essence of the Cosmos: birthing, lactating, conceiving, gestating are understood as cosmic transformatory, regenerative powers. And all genders in such cultures find purpose in supporting regenerative capacities. The texts we choose for our lives create the texture, the context – when we choose a story for our lives, or accept a pre-scribed one, it lives us. There is a cosmology in our everyday speech and action. Re-storying Goddess, and celebrating Her in Seasonal Moments however they manifest in your region, may participate in the process of scribing one’s self, authoring one’s self, at the deepest level, and re-storying the regenerative Universe as She. When I speak of ‘Goddess,’ I mean Her as a totality – not a ‘Feminine’ PART of the Sacred. ‘Goddess’ may be metaphor for Ultimate Creativity – the Sacred Cosmos … and in three qualities of Her Unfolding, …
(Prose) The Disappearing Leadership by Hearth Moon Rising

[Author’s Note: The Fayetteville Goddess Festival is a long-running event held in Fayetteville, Arkansas and hosted by the Omni Center for Peace. Started in 1990 as the Women’s Festival and Conference at the University of Arkansas, the Festival was forced to cut ties to the University in 2000 amid rumors that University officials were displeased by the presence of a lesbian workshop at the Festival. The most recent Fayetteville Goddess Festival took place March 17-26, 2017 and featured concerts, rituals, and daily workshops. Some of these workshops were restricted by age and self-identified gender, which did not seem to be the source of controversy.] There has been a lot of discussion over the last week or so about the Fayetteville Goddess Festival,

(Special Post 2) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

Artwork, “The-great-mother” by Julie Stewart Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Magi/Magus, from Magi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Magi (/ˈmeɪdʒaɪ/; singular magus /ˈmeɪɡəs/; from Latin magus) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest. Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astronomy/astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo‑)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the Chaldean founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words “magic” and “magician”. In the Gospel of Matthew, “μάγοι” (magoi) from the east do homage to the newborn Jesus, and the transliterated plural “magi” entered English from Latin in this context around 1200 (this particular use is also commonly rendered in English as “kings” and more often in recent times as “wise men”).[1] The singular “magus” appears considerably later, when it was borrowed from Old French in the late 14th century with the meaning magician. … An unrelated term, but previously assumed to be related, appears in the older Gathic Avestan language texts. This word, adjectival magavan meaning “possessing maga-“, was once the premise that Avestan maga- and Median (i.e. Old Persian) magu- were co-eval (and also that both these were cognates of Vedic Sanskrit magha-). While “in the Gathas the word seems to mean both the teaching of Zoroaster and the community that accepted that teaching”, and it seems that Avestan maga- is related to Sanskrit magha-, “there is no reason to suppose that the western Iranian form magu (Magus) has exactly the same meaning”[4] as well. But it “may be, however”, that Avestan moghu (which is not the same as Avestan maga-) “and Medean magu were the same word in origin, a common Iranian term for ‘member of the tribe’ having developed among the Medes the special sense of ‘member of the (priestly) tribe’, hence a priest.”[2]cf[3] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gaia, from Gaia (mythology) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In Greek mythology, Gaia (/ˈɡaɪə, ˈɡeɪə/ GHY-ə, GAY-ə;[1] from Ancient Greek Γαῖα, a poetical form of Γῆ Gē, “land” or “earth”),[2] also spelled Gaea (/ˈdʒiːə/ JEE-ə),[1] is the personification of the Earth[3] and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess. She is the mother of Uranus (the sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans (themselves parents of many of the Olympian gods) and the Giants, and of Pontus (the sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.[4] … The Greek name Γαῖα (Gaĩa)[5] is a mostly epic, collateral form of Attic Γῆ[6] (Gê), Doric Γᾶ (Gã, perhaps identical to Δᾶ Dã)[7] meaning “Earth”, a word of uncertain origin.[8] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[9] In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (transliterated as Ma-ga, “Mother Gaia”) also contains the root ga-.[9][10] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Greek mythology of Gaia’s family tree is remotely evocative of the Magoist genealogy written in the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), the principale text of Magoism. In Korean, “Mama” is also an honorary title referring to the royal family including ruler, ruler’s mother, father, grandmother and so on. This suggests that “ma” means “mother,” “ruler,” and “Goddess” all at once in gynocentric/gynocratic (Magoist/Magocratic) societies, pre-patriarchal in origin. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: I came to search the etymology of “montgomery” in relation to Mt. Mago or Mt. Goya and am led to such related terms as Gomer, Gog, Magog. Montgomery (name) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Montgomery or Montgomerie is a surname from a place name in Normandy.[1] Although there are many stories of its origin,[2][3][4][5] An old theory explains that the name is a corruption of “Gomer’s Mount” or “Gomer’s Hill” (Latin: Mons Gomeris), any of a number of hills in Europe named in attribution to the biblical patriarch Gomer,[2] but it does not explain the final -y or -ie (the phonetical evolution would have been *Montgomers) and it does not correspond to the old mentions of the place name Montgommery in Normandie : Monte Gomeri in 1032 – 1035, de Monte Gomerico in 1040 and de Monte Gumbri in 1046 – 1048.[6] More relevant is the explanation by the Germanic first name Gumarik,[7] a compound of guma “man” (see bridegroom) and rik “powerful”, that regularly gives the final -ry (-ri) in the French first names and surnames (Thierry, Amaury, Henry, etc.). Moreover, the name is still used as a surname in France as Gommery,[8] from the older first name Gomeri.[9] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gomer below from Wikipedia. Gomer (גֹּמֶר, Standard Hebrew Gómer, Tiberian Hebrew Gōmer, pronounced [ɡoˈmeʁ]) was the eldest son of Japheth (and of the Japhetic line), and father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah, according to the “Table of Nations” in the Hebrew Bible, (Genesis 10). The eponymous Gomer, “standing for the whole family,” as the compilers of the Jewish Encyclopedia expressed it,[1] is also mentioned in Book of Ezekiel 38:6 as the ally of Gog, the chief of the land of Magog. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gog and Magog from Wikipedia. Gog and Magog: They are depicted as monsters and barbarians from the East/Eurasia. Gog and Magog (/ɡɒɡ/; /ˈmeɪɡɒɡ/; Hebrew: גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג Gog u-Magog; Arabic: يَأْجُوج وَمَأْجُوج Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj) are names that appear in the Hebrew bible (Old Testament), the Book of Revelation and the Qur’an, sometimes indicating individuals and sometimes lands and peoples. Sometimes, but not always, they are connected with the “end times”, and the passages from the book of Ezekiel and Revelation in particular have attracted attention for this reason. From ancient times to the late Middle Ages Gog and Magog were identified with Eurasian nomads such as the Khazars, Huns and Mongols (this was true also for Islam, where they were identified first with Turkic tribes of Central Asia and later with the Mongols). Throughout this period they were conflated with various other legends, notably those concerning Alexander the Great, the Amazons, Red Jews, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and became the subject of much fanciful literature. In modern times they remain associated with apocalyptic thinking, especially in the United States and the Muslim world. Helen […]
(Special Post 5) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: I have come across the origin of the Dokkaebi (image, Heavenly Ruler Chiu, 14th Hanung of Danguk. Chiu represented the Magoist rule aided by her 81 giant sister clan allies (nine groups of Nine Hans) fought Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), one of the ancient rulers of pre-historic China. Chiu is known as the empeor of Guri-guk or Guryeo-guk (Nine Ri State or Nine Ryeo State), which is alternatiely referred to as Goryeo-guk and Goguryeo-guk by East Asians. She was worshipped as the deity of war and remembered/depicted for her helmet made of copper and iron. Records about her war against Hungdi inundates ancient Korean and Chinese texts and myths. About Chiu or Chiyou, it is too complex to discuss here. It is a topic to be treated in its own right. Suffice to say that even some of basic information from Wikipedia is illuminating. “Chiyou (蚩尤) was a tribal leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎) in ancient China. He is best known as a king who lost against the future Yellow Emperor during the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors era in Chinese mythology. For the Hmong people, Chiyou was a sagacious mythical king. He has a particularly complex and controversial ancestry, as he may fall under Dongyi, Miao or even Man, depending on the source and view. Today, Chiyou is honored and worshipped as the God of War and one of the three legendary founding fathers of China.” “According to the Song dynasty history book Lushi, Chiyou’s surname was Jiang (姜), and he was a descendant of Yandi. According to legend, Chiyou had a bronze head with a metal forehead. He had 4 eyes and 6 arms, wielding terrible sharp weapons in every hand. In some sources, Chiyou had certain features associated with various mythological bovines: his head was that of a bull with two horns, although the body was that of a human. He is said to have been unbelievably fierce, and to have had 81 brothers. Historical sources often described him as ‘cruel and greedy’, as well as ‘tyrannical’. Some sources have asserted that the figure 81 should rather be associated with 81 clans in his kingdom. Chiyou knows the constellations and the ancients spells for calling upon the weather. For example, he called upon a fog to surround Huangdi and his soldiers during the Battle of Zhuolu.” “Chiyou is regarded as a leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎, RPA White Hmong: Cuaj Li Ntuj) by nearly all sources. However, his exact ethnic affiliations are quite complex, with multiple sources reporting him as belonging to various tribes, in addition to a number of diverse peoples supposed to have directly descended from him. Some sources from later dynasties, such as the Guoyu book, considered Chiyou’s Li tribe to be related to the ancient San miao tribe (三苗). In the ancient Zhuolu Town is a statue of Chiyou commemorating him as the original ancestor of the Hmong people. The place is regarded as the birthplace of the San miao / Miao people, the Hmong being a subgroup of the Miao. In sources following the Hmong view, the “nine Li” tribe is called the “Jiuli” kingdom, Jiuli meaning “nine Li”. Modern Han Chinese scholar Weng Dujian considers Jiuli and San Miao to be Man southerners. Chiyou has also been counted as part of the Dongyi.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiyou Above all, her depiction by ancient China is of a pejorative one. As we will see in the next part, she is contrasted with her opponent Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), a triumphantly depicted ancient hero of ancient China. Above Wikipedia. See her images created by ancient Koreans, the middle one in the three figures, depicted as a woman with female breasts, one of Dokkaebi images. There are other records that describe one of her allies. as one adorned with snakes in the head, which reminds me of Medusa. Silla (left), Baekje (Center), Goguryeo (right) http://lasvegaskim.com/Etc_Poem_55.htm Max Dashu: Oe-ri, Buyeo, in the Baekje period. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: That is where the rooftile at the center is excavated. That is the original image of Dokkaebi that Lydia Ruyle chose and depicted in her banner work. I could not connect this image with Chiu until now. We have the female ruler who subdued the patrilocal force of Yellow Emperor, the forebear of ancientChinese emperors. There are lots of myths and data that I have found on them. Chiu is also numerously depicted as Dokkaebi faces, which makes me think of its connection to the iconography of Medusa and Gorgon (who comes as Three Sisters). Eight-snake-headed Medusahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa Gorgon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/art-dokkaebi-by-lydia-ruyle/ Lizzy Bluebell: ‘Gonggong’ is not a far stretch phonetically from ‘Gorgon’ – I note. Briefly here – because it is a complex explanation – much more can be said about the etymology. For example, “gorge” relates to deep mountain passes with water flowing through them as well as the human throat or gullet, (relating the word to both speech and eating) and mountains are/were Goddess terrain, later usurped by MON-A-Ster-ies. The masculine name Ge-Orge is code which relates to GE/Gaia/Gay as well as to ‘orgy’. Sanskrit “garg” begets English ‘gargle’, and a guttural (gut-her-all) sound. I’ve always seen the archetypal Medusa/Gorgon’s ‘snaking curls’ as the energy emmitted from her head by her Wild I-Deas, which returns us to the theme of the Pythia/Oracle/Snake connections too. “In Greek mythology, a Gorgon (/ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ Gorgon/Gorgo) is a female creature. The name derives from the ancient Greek word gorgós, which means “dreadful”, and appears to come from the same root as the Sanskrit word “garğ” (Sanskrit: गर्जन, garjana) which is defined as a guttural sound, similar to the growling of a beast,[1] thus possibly originating as an onomatopoeia. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature and occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters […]
(Special Post Isis 2) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 2 The Color Talk in Goddesses Kahena Dorothea Athena was also whitened which is sad. However the statues were worshiped by many women to whom they brought comfort. And their origins were later remembered by the abundance of Black Virgins that became important in Italy and other parts of Europe. I don’t see Dark Goddesses as shadows but as having depths of Creativity and Knowledge. My main Goddess is Kirke and the bast relief I have of her is a chocolate brown. Diane Horton The worship of Isis broadened from Egypt to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean, as well as the Middle East and the isles called now the British Isles. She and Her worship were virtually everywhere in the westernly known world of the time! She IS the Goddess of 10,000 Names! And as such she was adapted to each culture’s vision of Her. She was the basis of all the” Black Madonnas”. I do not think of this as Isis/Auset representing the “dark” Goddess as something somehow bad or to be dealt with, but rather that ancient darkness represents infinite potential, eternal creativity/fertility, the beginning and ending of all things, and the always deepening knowledge of magick. Max Dashu However, there is a politics of representation that we all need to be aware of, that pushes original African iconography down and away, and fronts Europeanized images. There is no possibility of “colorblindness” in such a system; a restoration of the original must be actively striven toward. This is incumbent on all of us not of (recent) African descent. Otherwise we perpetuate the injurious status quo, instead of overturning it. Harita Meenee I agree with those who say that race is largely a social construct. Its roots seem to lie in colonialism and the slave trade. I would also like to add that racism is used to oppress people of different nationalities and colors. Ηere in Greece the IMF neo-liberal policies are destroying our economy (and lives); they go hand in hand with a vicious racist campaign against immigrants, along with the rise of a neo-Nazi party. This is part of an effort to redirect people’s anger away from the government and bankers, towards those who are poor and foreign and often have a different color or religion. Fortunately, many grassroots activists are responding to this by building a strong anti-racist, antifascist movement. You can see our Facebook page below. It’s in Greek but the photos are quite revealing. If anyone is interested in learning more about the situation here, please message me and I’ll try to find some articles in English for you. https://www.facebook.co/19JanuaryATHENSvsFASCISM?fref=ts 19 Γεναρη – ΑΘΗΝΑ ΠΟΛΗ Αντιφασιστικη Μπροστά στη κλιμάκωση της φασιστικής απειλής και της ρατσιστικής βίας, στη εμφάν…See More Naa Ayele Kumari Let me put this in the context of something you might understand. This is a goddess group that honors the feminine and the power it represents. People in this group understand the oppression and misrepresentation of women. We understand the implications of misogynistic patriarchal thinking. We understand the implications of stealing the information, rites, and traditions from goddess centered cultures and rephrasing them into male dominated themes… especially those that then went on to oppress women today. This is the same thing that has happened as it related to race and our cultures. It infuriates us when a man may say… why do we have to focus on the goddess? Let us just accept that we are all human and no special consideration should be given to anyone because of their gender. Or, this is just a distraction or social construct and it really doesn’t matter. We understand the blatant disregard and ignorance of those statements. Yet, the same is true for race and people of other races. Your attitude and casual disregard perpetuates a lie that you are comfortable with and don’t wish to move from that comfort zone. It means you don’t have to be accountable for the injustices or oppression it continues to perpetuate in the larger culture toward people who do not look like you. As far as I am concerned, I truly believe that the dark goddess for many with white skin IS their shadow… It is the part of themselves that they deny and fear. That you may have come from black people may scare you… even when the science proves it. That deep down… you fear what you don’t understand. To even confront it is frightening… something that you would rather ignore and deny… Yet… here we are. Black, Yellow, Red… people.. women… who have been oppressed for thousands of year because of this… and are asking… to be seen in their true likeness… not as you wish them to be… or fear them to be. Naa Ayele Kumari Thank you Max Dashu, I so appreciate your scholarship and dedication to the truth where ever you find it… and Helen Hwang for staying open to it as well. [Someone withdrew the threads.] Rick Williams No, you can’t passively aggressively slither your way out of this, reread your own statements and that last post contradicts most of your ascertains. I can’t believe that you honestly say fire away at you like you’re some sort of martyr and VICTIM of being misunderstood, not at all, I understand you very well. I don’t think you understand yourSELF. That’s the real tragedy. Rick Williams “The Lips of Wisdom are Closed except to the Ears of Understanding.” It is in quotes, and it’s part of Ancient Wisdom, of Tehuti, DJehuti, or Hermes Trimegitus… The Great Scribe of KMT.. they have alot of pretty pictures of him all over KMT(Egypt).. still have no idea what you are saying have the time. Max Dashu Thank you Naa Ayele for taking the time to make the extremely apt analogy of women’s oppression to clarify the politics of race oppression […]

Imbolc: Through Goddess Eyes by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Photo by Carolyn Lee Boyd In times past, Creation’s Winter cupped me in her icy hand of sanctuary Gathered in, I sucked dormant life, and slumbered Till Earth’s rebirthing groans awakened my new body Now, older and full of life’s weeping and wondering awe At all that has happened in my decades on Earth I must shake myself into consciousness My seed’s opaque, blinding hull disintegrates and Bodyless, at last I can see through Goddess eyes I ache as my blood paints each flower petal I spin the whirlwind that cannot stop creating abundance I push the seasons through the year that mortals believe revolve of their own accord. Through Goddess eyes I can see me, I inhabit Winter’s hand as my own. I make the cold to slow creation of outside of me To gather the seed into fertile stillness within. That burgeons in my own time. https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
(Video) Autumn Equinox/Mabon Poetry by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Autumnal Equinox occurs each year in the range of March 20-23 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in the range of September 20 -23 in the Northern Hemisphere. Autumn Equinox is a point of sacred balance: it is the point of balance in the dark part of Earth’s annual cycle. Sun is equidistant between North and South as it was/is at Spring Equinox, but in this dark phase of the cycle, the trend is toward increasing dark. Henceforth the dark part of the day will exceed the light part: thus it is a Moment of certain descent … and a sacred Moment for feeling and contemplating the grief and power of loss, for ceremoniously joining personal and collective grief and loss with the larger Self in whom we are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZflKLkvP8 Below is the text of the video. It is based on the traditional poetry for PaGaian Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony[i]. This is the Moment of the Autumnal Equinox in our Hemisphere – the moment of balance of light and dark in the dark part of the cycle. The light and dark parts of the day in the South and in the North of our planet, are of equal length at this time. We feel for the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun … breathing in the light, swelling with it, letting our breath go to the dark, staying with it. In our part of Earth, the balance is tipping into the dark. We remember the coolness of it. This is the time when we give thanks for our harvests – all that we have gained. And we remember too the sorrows, losses involved. The story of Old tells us that Persephone, Beloved Daughter, is given the wheat from Her Mother – the Mystery, knowledge of life and death. She receives it graciously. But she sets forth into the darkness – both Mother and Daughter grieve that it is so. Demeter, the Mother, says: “You are offered the wheat in every moment … I let you go as Child, most loved of Mine: you descend to Wisdom, to Sovereignty. You will return as Mother, co-Creator with me. You are the Seed in the Fruit, becoming the Fruit in the Seed. Inner Wisdom guides your path.” We give thanks for our harvests – our lives they are blessed. We are Daughters and Sons of the Mother. Yet we take our Wisdom and all that we have gained, and remember the sorrows – the losses involved. We remember the grief of the Mother, of mothers and lovers everywhere, our grief. Persephone descends. The Beloved One is lost. Persephone goes forth into the darkness to become Queen of that world. She tends the sorrows. The Seed represents our Persephones, who tends the sorrows – we are the Persephones, who may tend the sorrows. We go out into the night with Her and plant our seeds. Persephone blesses us with her fertile promise: “You have waxed into the fullness of life, And waned into darkness; May you be renewed in tranquility and wisdom[ii].” These represent our hope. The Seed of life never fades away. She is always present. Blessed be the Mother of all life. Blessed be the life that comes from Her and returns to Her. We tie red threads on each other: we participate in the Vision of the Seed – of the continuity of Life, that continues beneath the visible. The Mother knowledge grows within us. Our hope is in the Sacred Balance of the Cosmos – the Thread of Life, the Seed that never fades away: it is the Balance of Grief and Joy, the Care that we may feel in our Hearts. NOTES: [i] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, p. 239-247. [ii] Charlene Spretrnak, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, p. 116. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Spretnak, Charlene. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: a Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992/1978.
(Audio) The Wheel of the Year as a ‘Turas’ by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The text part is an edited excerpt from the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, and the audio links are usually part of the Introduction to a year long PaGaian Cosmology course, but here freely offered. Womb of Gaia altar (Southern Hemisphere version) The eight points of the wheel in this and many Pagan calendars represent ‘seasonal thresholds’ (and there may be more or less in your region), the circuit of Earth about the Sun. This is the sacred site in which we, all this planet’s beings, find ourselves, in which we live everyday. We may think of this journey around Sun as the revolving walk of a pilgrim about a sacred site – what the Celts called a “turas.” The circle of eight stones/objects that I place in my wheel[i] represents this sacred Journey. Turas is a Celtic word meaning “journey,” “pilgrimage,” and refers especially to the circular, spiralling prayer used by people in Celtic countries as they walked sunwise around a sacred site[ii](and sunwise in the Southern Hemisphere is counterclockwise). The ceremonial celebration of the “Wheel of the Year” as it manifests in your place, as a whole year-long experience, participated in fully as an art process and relationship with Gaia, IS a sacred site – a kind of virtual sacred site, a morphic field: that is, the ceremonies themselves develop a kind of organism, an alive space (a womb). You can be held within it. One may enter consciously into this sacred site – real space and time – through the practice of ceremonial celebration of this annual journey, the Turas of our planet: and thus enter into the magic and power of deep Creativity – found in real time and space. For this reason I am religious about not doing festivals dictated by the Gregorian calendar, especially since they are out of sync with southern hemispheric seasons – Christmas, Easter. I am on a Journey, a pilgrim in real time and space, and indeed I have learned so much with this creative discipline … I am Her disciple. Below is a walking meditation, that I have developed to create a mini-experience of this everyday turas. It may be done around a simple version of a Womb of Gaia altar as pictured above, which has the Seasonal markers placed in a circle. TURAS EXPERIENCE – a walking meditation NOTE: if you are unable to walk around your altar that is okay … visualize the process as you sit. Begin sitting at the outer edge of your circle then move into the center as directed in the meditation, if you are able to. We begin walking sunwise (counter-clockwise for Southern Hemisphere), starting some distance out from your altar if possible. There are two links here: one for the Northern Hemisphere and one for the Southern Hemisphere. Below the links to the experience is the text for the walk. Northern Hemisphere: PaGaian Turas Experience N.H. (8:27min) Southern Hemisphere: PaGaian Turas Experience S.H. (7:03min) Let us begin, by walking sunwise, slowly around the edge of your circle, gazing upon the eight points of the mandala … aware that you are passing through the Seasons, as you always have done, every day of your life, joining Earth in Her everyday sacred journey. You are Earth making this Journey. After you have made a few circuits, begin to spiral in slowly and contemplating this particular Moment – all that it has taken for you to come to this Place and Moment … beginning with taking the time to be with this process, then all that led to your decision to do this, your personal story that brings you to this, the stories of your parents, of your grandparents … and further back … to stories of ancestors and other ancestral beings, who have walked this turas of Earth around the Sun – joining all these. … and contemplating where your ancestors may have come from, and where every atom in your body may have been … and slowly spiralling into the Centre. When you have arrived at Centre, you may consider this Centre, THE Centre, our Origin, which is always present. Ten percent of your bodymind which is hydrogen, is a direct result of the Original Flaring Forth, when all hydrogen was made. The Origin is present right here within you. And all the rest – carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and heavier elements – was born in stars. All this recycled many times over.[iii] Here in the Centre, you may celebrate Cosmogenesis, who you are PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOURSELF your particular beautiful Self, new in every moment – Virgin OPEN UP YOUR ARMS in deep relationship and communion with Other, the web of life – Mother DIRECT YOUR HANDS AND ARMS DOWN TO EARTH directly participating in the sentience of the Creative Cosmos, the Well of Creativity – Old One. FOLDING YOUR ARMS OVER YOUR TORSO All present here … this Creative Dynamic unfolding the Cosmos. And now, with this memory, turning to your left (right for the Northern Hemisphere) and slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your place in this Moment of time. DRUM … slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your Place in this Moment of Time. DRUM until you/all have arrived at the circumference. And Here you are! And so, it is for every moment. NOTES: [i] I name this altar a “Womb of Gaia” altar, and it is one that students of PaGaian Cosmology create for the Introduction to the year long course. [ii] Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, 31. [iii] This paragraph is a quote from Australian molecular biologist Darryl Reanney when he gave an experiential paper at The Climbing River Foundation conference in Melbourne in 1990. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Matthews, Caitlin. The Celtic Spirit. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The Cosmos is a ceremony, a ritual. Dawn and dusk, seasons, supernovas – it is an ongoing Event of coming into being and passing away. The Cosmos is always in flux, and we exist as participants in this great ritual event, this “cosmic ceremony of seasonal and diurnal rhythms” which frame “epochal dramas of becoming,” as Charlene Spretnak describes it.[i] Swimme and Berry describe the universe as a dramatic reality, a Great Conversation of announcement and response.[ii]Ritual/ceremony[iii] may be the human conscious response to the announcements of the Universe – an act of conscious participation. Ceremony then may be understood as a microcosmos[iv] – a human-sized replication of the Drama, the Dynamic we find ourselves in. Swimme and Berry describe ritual as an ancient response humans have to the awesome experience of witnessing the coming to be and the passing away of things; they say that a “ritual mode of expression” is from its beginning “the manner in which humans respond to the universe, just as birds respond by flying or as fish respond by swimming.”[v] It is the way in which we as humans, as a species, may respond to this awesome experience of being and becoming, how we may hold the beauty and the terror. Humans have exhibited this tendency to ritualize since the earliest times of our unfolding: evidence so far reveals burial sites dating back one hundred thousand years, as mentioned in the previous chapter. We often went to huge effort in these matters, that is almost incomprehensible to the modern industrialised econocentric mind: the precise placing of huge stones in circles such as found at Stonehenge and the creation of complex sites such as Silbury Hill may be expressions of some priority, indicating that econocentric thinking – such as tool making, finding shelter and food, was not enough or not separate from the participation in Cosmic events. Ritual seems to have expressed, and still does actively express for some peoples, something essential to the human – a way of being integral with our Cosmic Place, which was not perceived as separate from material sustenance, the Source of existence: thus it was a way perhaps of sensing “meaning” as it might be termed these days – or “relationship.” Swimme and Berry note that the order of the Universe has been experienced especially in the seasonal sequence of dissolution and renewal; this most basic pattern has been an ultimate referent for existence.[vi] The seasonal pattern contains within it the most basic dynamics of the Cosmos – desire, fullfilment, loss, transformation, creation, growth, and more. The annual ceremonial celebration of the seasonal wheel – the Earth-Sun sacred site within which we tour – can be a pathway to the Centre of these dynamics, a way of making sense of the pattern, a way of sensing it. One enters the Universe’s story. The Seasonal Moments when marked and celebrated in the art form of ceremony may be sens-ible ‘gateways’ through the flesh of the world[vii] to the Centre – which is omnipresent Creativity. Humans do ritual everyday – we really can’t help ourselves. It is simply a question of what rituals we do, what story we are telling ourselves, what we are “spelling”[viii] ourselves with – individually and collectively. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[ix] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[x] Ceremony then is a form of social action. NOTES: [i] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [ii] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 153. [iii] I will use either or both of these terms at different times: I generally prefer “ceremony” as Kathy Jones defines it in Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 319. She says that ritual involves a repeated set of actions which may contain spiritual or “mundane” elements (such as a daily ritual of brushing one’s teeth), “whereas ceremony is always a spiritual practice and may or may not include ritual elements.” The PaGaian seasonal celebrations/events are thus most kin to “ceremony,” although I do not perceive any action as “mundane.” However, “ritual” is more commonly used to speak of how humans have conversed with cosmos/Earth. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [v] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 152-153. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Abram speaks of “matter as flesh” in The Spell of the Sensuous, 66, citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Invisible and the Invisible (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968). [viii] Starhawk used this term on her email list in 2004 to describe the story-telling we might do to bring forth the changes we desire. [ix] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [x] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Jones, Kathy. Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Artful Ceremonial Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This article is an edited excerpt from Chapter 7 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. I always wore a special headpiece for the Seasonal ceremonies when I facilitated them over the years, and I feel that any participant may do so, not just the main celebrant. My ceremonial headpiece with its changing and continuous Seasonal decoration took on increasing significance over the years; it became a personal central representation of the year-long ceremonial art process of creating, destroying and re-creating. For the research period of my doctoral studies particularly, when I was documenting the process, I realised that this headpiece came to represent for me the essence of “She” – as Changing One, yet ever as Presence – as I was coming to know Her. In my journal for the Mabon/Autumn Equinox process notes one year I wrote: As I pace the circle with the Mabon headpiece in the centre, I see “Her” as She has been through the Seasons … the black and gold of Samhain, the deep red, white and evergreen of Winter, the white and blue of Imbolc, the flowers of Eostar, the rainbow ribbons of Beltane, the roses of Summer, the seed pods and wheat of Lammas, and now the Autumn leaves. I see in my mind’s eye, and feel, Her changes. I am learning … The Mother knowledge grows within me. The headpiece, the wreath, the altar, the house decorations, all participate in the ceremony: they are part of the learning, the method, the relationship – similar to how one might bring flowers and gifts of significance to a loved one at special moments. Then further, the removal and re-creation of the decorations are part of the learning – an active witness to transformation through time.

How do you say what The Mago Work is? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Mago Circle Members

It took many years for me to pronounce the communal nature of the Mago Work. Defining the Mago Work necessarily endows us with the bird’s eye view of the Great Goddess, the primordial consciousness of WE in S/HE. Early this year, I asked people to define the Mago Work and their definitions are illuminating about what this book ultimately seeks to achieve.[1]
(Book Excerpt 1) Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: Year 4’s Mago Almanac celebrates the birth of Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey. The Magoist 13 month 28 day calendric movement has grown steadily and we welcome the public as well!] PREFACE: What Mago Almanac Planner Offers The Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey enchants people and our societies to live with a sense of the natural timespace patterned by the luni-menstrual rhythm in company with the earth’s song and dance. This is not a statement of poetic fancy unsupported by science or mathematics. We are invited to walk through the matrix of Sonic Numerology, the organizing force of Life. The 13 month 28 day Magoist Calendar returns calendric regularity to us. Calendric regularity is the very vision that unfolds the metamorphic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Unlike the 12 month irregular day calendar that modifies the natural rhythm to serve the purpose of controlling people, the Magoist Calendar guides human activities within the natural rhythm to harmonize the human world with the natural world. The Mago Almanac Planner is built to provide flesh to the bones of the Mago Almanac. Taking the latter as foundation, Mago Almanac Planner partitions a year into the units of weeks and days. The regularity of 28 days makes it possible to lay out 52 weeks and 364 days with one or two extra days seamlessly. The rhythm of nine numbers becomes transparent. Each day of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. the first to 364th. Likewise, each week of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. Week 1 to Week 52. Each day is given the daily number, the moon phase, and/or 24 Seasonal Marks. Special days include such double dates as New Year (1st Moon 1st Day), double second (2nd Moon 2nd Day), double third (3rd Moon 3rd Day), and so forth. By writing the Mago Almanac Planner, I have observed that Double Ninth (9th Moon 9th day) overlaps with the 16th mark of 24 Seasonal Marks, Ipchu (立秋 Entering Fall) or Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere. The day of Double Ninth is indeed the center point of a year! Also the interval of 24 Seasonal Marks is about every 15 days, whereas that of 8 Seasonal Marks is about every 45 days. In three Appendixes, I have provided a traditional style of one year calendar, Year 4’s 364 Days (52 Weeks) with 2 Extra Days and their Gregorian Dates or the conversion chart, Large Calendar 1 (Years 1-4) marked in Gregorian C. Dates, and Year 4 Lunar-Menstrual Chart in which one can add their menstrual dates in relation to the moon phases and seasonal marks. As a whole, the Mago Almanac Planner is designed to personalize one’s own celebratory or commemorative days in tune with nature’s rhythm. This Planner marks the 4th year (Volume 4) of the revived Magoist Calendar, Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar. We are about to complete the first Large Calendar, which refers to the first four years (Years 1-4). We set the new moon date (December 18) before Winter Solstice in 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere as the first lunation of the revived Magoist Calendar. If we count the year from the onset of the nine-state Danguk confederacy (3898 BCE-2333 BCE) founded by Goma, Magoist Shaman Queen Mother, our Year 1 would be 5916 ME (Magoma Era). Technically speaking, the Magoist Calendar formed at the time of our beginning came to be reincarnated on December 18, 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere (hereafter it implies the Northern Hemisphere otherwise indicated.) The year 2018 for the rebirth of the revived Magoist Calendar was arbitrary in that it could have been in 2017 or 2019. In retrospect, I must say that we are lucky to set the time of our first lunation on December 18 2018 because it makes the calendric migration process the smoothest. This means that our Magoist Calendar runs as less as 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. If we had begun in 2017, our New Year would have been December 17. Only one day difference. However, if we had begun in 2016, our New Year would have been on November 29. Likewise, if we had begun in 2019, our New Year would have been on November 26. These dates are the new moon date before Winter Solstice, the New Year day. The Magoist Calendar charts the human world into the Reality of WE/HERE/NOW. The Magoist Calendar needs to be in use today, which means that it has to be translated into the language of the Gregorian Calendar. For we have lost the actual counting of the Magoist Calendar into our days in the course of patriarchal history. Mago Almanac serves the purpose of making our calendric migration possible from the 12 month Gregorian Calendar to the 13 month Magoist Calendar. It guides our collective journey in the Mother TimeSpace interwoven by the cosmogonic force of Sonic Numerology, the musical interplay of nine numbers, which gives birth, nurtures, and transforms all beings in the cosmos. Intriguingly, I have realized only last year that the Magoist Calendar is identical with “the 13 Moon Turtle Calendar,” the calendar of North American indigenous peoples, which adopts the turtle shell that has 13 inner sections and 28 outer sections for the calendar of 13 moons and 28 days (see figure). This speaks volumes that the 13 month 28 day calendar was once widely known among peoples of the ancient world. The Magoist Calendar restores the link between lunation and menstruation as a 28 day monthly cycle, a topic that I have discussed in my essay, “Introducing the Magoist Calendar: Original Blessing of the Womb Time,” included in this planner. Why do we need to reinstate the calendar that is based on the luni-menstruation rhythm? That is because the Magoist Calendar is in accordance with Sonic Numerology. Put differently, the moon-women duet inscribed in the 13 month 28 day calendar is given by the Natural World. In fact, the Magoist Calendar is the first and …
(Pilgrimage Essay 2) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Part 2 Traditional Korea and the Primordial Home of Magoism It was the time for the sacred, ancient mystery of Magoism to be reenacted once again for the Race of WE! Mago Pilgrimage was an open invitation to the deep knowing that Korean Magoism unfolds beneath the surface of patriarchal consciousness. It was a call from the Background [to borrow Mary Daly’s term, which, I explicate, refers to the biophilic reality wherein the deep memories of Goddess are alive, unfettering from the foreground, patriarch reality] to be present with Mago, the Great Goddess, Here and Now! Third eyes flashed, while open hearts unlocked the doors to the path. We heard the whisper, the chorus of the natural, cultural, and historical landscapes of Korea, the arcane music of the Female Beginning. The magic worked its own feats. As could be expected, undertaking the Mago pilgrimage entailed daunting tasks for me. Nonetheless, it was proven to me time and again that the purpose creates the means. The Korean saying, “Where there is a will, there is a way,” spoke to it well. We, the intercontinental pilgrims, were made welcome by supporters, organizers, and volunteers from the locale. We attracted fabulous scholars, teachers, artists, administrators, and activists along our paths. It was the first cross-cultural and cross-gender goddess event to be held in Korea in modern times! Excitement and anticipation were high. As a researcher of Mago and Magoism, I knew the Mago pilgrimage was the right thing to do. In fact, I had been faithfully following the direction that my heart beckoned to throughout my life. The consequences were the actions that I took. This time, however, I was rewarded with the fate-ful encounter; the very research of Mago came as a revelation to me. The topic of Mago emerged from nowhere at the juncture of my labyrinthine journey to non-patriarchal [gynocentric] consciousness. I was a student of feminist studies in religions. Without knowing what was in store for me, I knew that I was not content with the feminist theology of patriarchal religions of the West and the East. If any theme of these religions had appealed to me — I wished at times, to confess to my readers — during those years, my path would not have crossed with Magoism. My radical feminist quest was the cause for encountering Mago.

Author: Mago Work Admin

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